OLPC Oceania

Oceania Community - News - Content - Evaluation - Languages - Countries
Cook Islands -French Polynesia - Kiribati - Nauru - New Caledonia - Niue - Palau - Papua New Guinea - Samoa- Solomon Islands - Tonga - Tokelau - Tuvalu - Vanuatu

see also OLPC Friends, OLPC Australia and OLPC New Zealand

• Picture drawn with Paint on an XO by an 8 year old boy in PNG, showing the electricity distribution in his village.

OLPC Oceania describes OLPC activities in the Islands of the Pacific (excluding New Zealand and Australia). Ethnologically, the region includes sub-regions of Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. Geographically, it includes thousands of coral atolls and volcanic islands with small populations, grouped in 26 island nations. There are about 1.7 million children aged 6-12 in the region.

At the 2007 Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) Leaders Summit, the leaders of 21 nations noted “the potential utility of the One Laptop Per Child initiative and the need for education authorities … to assess the priority to be accorded to it in their countries as a tool for education and disseminating information to rural and remote communities…”

In 2008, One Laptop Per Child Inc., and the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) formed a partnership to introduce the OLPC concept in the region and conduct small pilots of the XO Laptop in schools in 5 PIF Countries: Nauru, Niue, Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu. (* The pilots were made possible by (1) a donation of 5000 XO laptops by OLPC worth US$2 million and, (2) the assignment by OLPC and SPC of human resources worth US$500k.)

In 2009-10, 17 Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) nations will introduce the OLPC programme in their schools. Countries include the 5 original Pilot countries plus the Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, French Polynesia, Guam, Kiribati, Republic of Marshall Islands, Palau, Samoa, Tokelau, Tonga and Tuvalu.

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OLPC is represented in the region by Regional Director, Michael Hutak, based in Sydney, and its deployment activities are coordinated by the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC), head quartered in Noumea, with Dr. Jimmie Rodgers as Director-General. Additional guidance comes from members of the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat (PIFS), with Mr. John Budden as executive secretary. SPC has appointed Ian Thomson as OLPC Programme Coordinator to manage the project.

In consultation with governments, donor partners and other key stakeholders, OLPC and SPC have developed a concept note to deliver "One Laptop per Pacific Child" to every child int he region in Basic Education by 2015. Download the Concept Note .

Assisting in the establishment of a "National Core Team" to own and coordinate direct each national effort is the first and most crucial task in setting up a successful and sustainable OLPC deployment.

Each project is developing its own Monitoring and Evaluation criteria, although moves are underway to establish regional (and indeed universal) benchmarks, as requested by multilateral and international donor organisations.

Related activity in the region includes implementation of a satellite-based Pacific Rural Internet Connectivity System (Pacific RICS) consisting of low-cost VSAT satellite broadband Internet that will provide a broad infrastructure to accommodate large-scale OLPC rollout. This initiative, launched at the 2007 Forum Leaders meeting in Tonga responds to a call by Leaders in the Pacific Plan Digital Strategy to bridge the digital and communication divide between the urban and rural and remote areas in the Pacific. Initial funding came from the Australian Government, however for its usefulness to be realized in the region's rural and remote communities, Pacific Island countries need to invest in roll-out programs at national levels. The RICs together with the Oceania OLPC initiative is a package for rural and remote areas in the Pacific, addressing both the transport of information as well as the content - 'Every RICS site is an OLPC Hub'.

Initial countries include Solomon Islands, Tonga, Kiribati, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea.

To view the current status of progress within a leading site see the Solomon Islands or Papua New Guinea pages.

Participating countries

Trial deployments have started, or as of January 2009 are in preparation at the following countries:

• Projects under way

1. Solomon Islands
2. Papua New Guinea
3. Nauru
4. Tuvalu
5. Niue
6. Cook Islands
7. Vanuatu
8. Samoa
9. Tonga
10. Vanuatu

• Project ready to proceed

1. Kiribati
2. Tokelau
3. FSM
4. New Caledonia
5. Palau

Links to these countries will provide detailed information on the project, pictures and progress and developments worthy of note. Each country will be encouraged to share experiences and knowledge by keeping their country page up to date.

Key contacts

The following people have been instrumental in the evolution of this project:

• Dr. Jimmie Rodgers, Director General, Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC)
• Dr. Barry Vercoe, OLPC Asia-Pacific Liaison
• Michael Hutak, OLPC Regional Director, Oceania
• David Leeming, Oceania OLPC Coordinator, SPC, and Technical Advisor, People First Network, Solomon Islands
• Ian Thomson, RICS and Oceania OLPC Coordinator, SPC, [1]
• Phil Hardstaff, IT Manager, SPC
• Rangan Srikhanta, Executive Director OLPC Australia
• John Budden, Economic Infrastructure Advisor, Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat
• Pia Waugh, OLPC Friends, Technical support and volunteer coordinator

Strategy

The team is working on all of the overarching strategies below. At the moment we are in a learning phase - the Oceania top-level strategy will be informed from out experience in the 8-country trials above. Each country will have to develop local interpretations of these strategies. Meanwhile, we hope to post information on our approach in the areas below, in the relevant country pages of this category.

• Content
• Evaluation
• Trials deployment plan
• Distribution
• Training
  • Pacific - Teacher Training with lesson plans on the Wikieducator
  • Experimental lesson plans exported from Wikieducator into Moodle (Solomon Islands SchoolNet)
• Scaling up
• Repairs and Fault Reporting
• Connectivity
• Communities and volunteers
• Internet Safety Programs
• End of Life Plan for Laptops
• Localization and local languages

There has been a lot of discussions with potential donors for rollout of OLPC. Some donors have not yet accepted that OLPC is the right way to go. Here are some Objections to OLPC

Documents and Resources

The following is a collection of materials that have been produced or obtained by the project.

• OLPC Deployment Principles
• Starting a new Project
• Tokelau planning for OLPC project
• OLPC Principles and Basic information
• Teacher training
• Teaching template
• Agenda and Briefing handout for meeting with the Ministry of Education, PNG, June 12th 2008. This contains useful summaries and can be adapted for similar meetings.
• OLPC Oceania: Impacts and Feedback December 2008 End-of-year status report compiled by SPC.
• Maximizing the Benefits of ICT/Multimedia for Education in the South Pacific
  A report by USP and JICA. A useful report if you are considering developing Pacific Island learning resources for XO's
• 9th PRIDE Regional Workshop, “Pacific Knowledge Societies: developing equitable access to quality resources and information literacy” Tanoa International Hotel, Nadi, Fiji, 8-13th September 2008, PRIDE, PIFS, UNESCO, UNICEF, SPC and PREL

Document formats are ODT (use Open Office) or PDF.

Teacher Training

Please see the Teacher Training page.

Publications

List of publications and literature from OLPC Oceania can be found here

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Primary Language	,|x|Language spoken::x}}
Number of Laptops	Number of manufactured laptops::4500
Keyboard Layout	Keyboard::OLPC English Keyboard
Build	,|x|Software release::x}}
Date(s) Arrived in Country	,|x|Has received laptops on date::x}}
School Server	,|x|School server status::x}}
Deployment Status	[[Deployment status::Plan to use a School Server, possibly 0.4. Some islands may be using pre-release 8.2 image.]]